


Quiet, Real Quiet

by luxover



Category: American Idol RPF, David Cook (Musician)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-10
Updated: 2012-01-10
Packaged: 2017-10-29 07:30:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/317311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luxover/pseuds/luxover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neal’s quiet, real quiet, when he roots around in his closet for his coat and his gloves because, yeah, his parents are asleep, but they’re still only one room over and his mom always seems to know when Neal’s doing shit he shouldn’t be. It’s an annoying talent, Neal thinks, but that doesn’t stop him from lacing up his Doc Martens and sliding open the window.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quiet, Real Quiet

Neal’s quiet, real quiet, when he roots around in his closet for his coat and his gloves because, yeah, his parents are asleep, but they’re still only one room over and his mom always seems to know when Neal’s doing shit he shouldn’t be. It’s an annoying talent, Neal thinks, but that doesn’t stop him from lacing up his Doc Martens and sliding open the window.

It’s cold outside, real cold and snowy and wet, and the air hits Neal’s chest hard. He double-checks that his gloves are shoved in the back right pocket of his jeans, his cigarettes in the back left, and then ducks down to fit through the window frame. It’s nothing new, all this sneaking out bullshit; he’s done it a thousand times and he’s got it all down to a science, where to jump and where to step and when to just drop to the ground because he’s close enough anyways.

Neal makes it to the sidewalk before he realizes that he’s forgotten to shut his window behind him, but to be honest, he doesn’t really fucking care. He pats down his pockets to find a lighter and lights a cigarette, one hand gloved and the other bare and freezing and pale, holding the cigarette. Luckily Dave doesn’t live that far away, just a few blocks over, or else Neal thinks he might’ve called this whole fucking thing off and gone back to bed.

The streetlights are on and everything’s covered in snow, making it all seem brighter out than it really is. Neal thinks he can see his breath—it’s fucking cold enough to, he knows that much—but he can’t tell the difference between his breath and the smoke from his cigarette, curling up and up and up into the night sky.

The bottoms of his jeans are soaking wet by the time he gets to Dave’s and he stands outside Dave’s window, throwing rocks at the glass like a fucking cliché and saying, “Dave. Hey—Dave!”

Dave wakes up and opens the window and he looks pissed as shit, but Neal doesn’t care because Dave has bed head and pillow creases on his face and he isn’t wearing a shirt.

“Are you crazy?” he hisses. “My parents are asleep.”

“Sorry,” Neal says, but they both know he’s not. “Come down here?”

For a minute, Neal thinks Dave might say no, but he doesn’t, just signals to Neal that he needs a minute and shuts the window behind him. He comes out through the back door a few minutes later, jacket on and a scarf wound round his neck.

“You got me grounded, you know,” is the first thing Dave says. They’d ditched class earlier that day to go see a movie and eat some shitty pizza, and Dave had blown him in some seedy back alley, his knees in the slush and the mud.

“I know,” Neal says. “I figured. Come on.”

“Okay,” Dave says, and Neal thinks it says something that Dave still trusts him, that Dave’s still willing to do this shit with Neal when Neal had gotten him into trouble.

They plow through the snow and towards the sidewalk, Dave following Neal, and they only stop when Neal has to light another cigarette. Dave doesn’t say, That shit will kill you, and he doesn’t say, You should try to quit, but Neal knows Dave’s thinking it when he reaches over and cups his hand to block the wind as Neal works the lighter.

“So where to?” Dave asks.

“Everywhere,” Neal says, although he feels like a fucking idiot for even thinking it, let along saying it. Dave doesn’t make fun of him, and Neal appreciates it.

“Okay,” Dave says. “Alright.” He reaches down and grabs a fistful of snow, starts packing it into a tight ball, and Neal doesn’t like that.

“Don’t even think about it,” he says. “Don’t you even fucking try it.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Dave says, and then winds up like a pitcher and throws the snowball at a tree trunk.

They walk some more, just in and out of cul-de-sacs and up and down streets that neither of them live on, but it’s nice.

“That guy should call us back tomorrow,” Neal says. “About the practice space.” He’s walking right behind Dave, trying to slot his feet into the footprints Dave leaves behind.

“That’ll be nice,” Dave says. “I think my mom’s getting tired of having us play in the garage.” He stops short and Neal doesn’t notice it until it’s too late, his eyes focused on the ground, and so he walks right into Dave’s back, causing them both to lose their footing and to fall to the ground. The snow is cold, really fucking cold, and it’s even colder when it’s down his shirt and in his gloves. 

“Fuck,” Neal says. “Fuck, fuck, cold,” and he scrambles to get off of Dave and the ground and everything. He helps Dave up, too, pulls him up by his hand, and brushes snow out of his hair.

“You’ve got snow all over you,” Dave says as he smiles, and he brushes at the front of Neal’s jacket.

“You’ve got it all the fuck over you, too,” Neal says, and then they’re both laughing, laughing so hard that they’re crying, and Neal doesn’t know what it is that caused that but it doesn’t matter because it feels good to laugh like that, one arm thrown over Dave’s shoulders and the other grabbing onto his forearm, anchoring Dave to him as if he might just float away.

When he can breathe again, he leans forward and kisses Dave on the mouth, feels Dave smile against his own lips. Dave fists his hands in the front of Neal’s coat, pulls him closer, and Neal can feel Dave shiver, or maybe he’s the one shivering, or maybe it’s both of them, together, at the same time.

“If it wasn’t so fucking cold out, I’d take your clothes off right now,” Neal says. “I want to touch you.” 

“I want to touch you, too,” Dave says, and he says it like he knows what Neal really means. 

Neal kisses him again, long and with a lot of tongue and like they’ve been doing it forever, when really it’s only been a few months. It feels like longer, though, because Neal can’t even remember a time when he didn’t know Dave, when Dave wasn’t his, some way or another. Dave pulls back first and Neal follows him, knows he must look like a fucking idiot, but Dave gives him another kiss, and another and another, and they’re all over too quick and the skin around Neal’s lips are left cold, rapidly-cooling where Dave’s spit is.

“Is everything okay?” Dave asks. His eyebrows are knotted together and he’s breathing heavily, little short breaths that Neal can see in the air between them.

“Yeah,” Neal says. “But I am sorry.”

“I don’t care,” Dave says with a shrug, and Neal knows that it means he doesn’t mind that they got caught, that he let Neal talk him into it in the first place. “It’s not like being grounded keeps me from sneaking out.”

Neal says, “No, I guess not,” and they start to head back to Dave’s house. Neal doesn’t hold Dave’s hand or any of that shit, but he walks close enough that their shoulders bump with each step.

“Have you done the English reading yet?” Dave asks, breaking the silence.

“Yeah fucking right,” Neal says, and Dave laughs.

“Should’ve figured,” he says.

Back at Dave’s house, Neal asks, “How long are you grounded for?”

“Only a week,” Dave says. “I told her it was the first time I’d ever ditched.”

“And that you learned your fucking lesson, right?” Neal asks.

“Well, I have,” Dave says. “Don’t listen to Neal, and if you have to, don’t get caught.”

Neal smiles, says, “Shut the fuck up,” and, “It was one time,” and, “You were the one who wanted to see the movie in the first place.” And then he kisses Dave again, right there against the side of Dave’s house, and Dave kisses back.

“I’m going to go inside and die of hypothermia now, okay?” Dave asks.

“Yeah, yeah,” Neal says. “I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess.”

“Alright,” Dave says, and then he heads inside and Neal stands there, waits until the light in Dave’s room turns off and then he waves because he knows Dave will be looking out the window. 

He trudges back home, back through the snow and the slush and the mud, and smokes on the walk. Most of his pack is soaked through and it fucking sucks, but Neal manages to find one that’s dry enough to light and it lasts him most of the way, til he’s at the end of his street.

He climbs back in through his window and his room is freezing by that point, the window having been open for the few hours that he was gone. He takes off his jacket and tosses it in the corner with his boots and his gloves, and then he strips off his shirt and his wet jeans, every movement he makes seeming louder than it is. 

Dave calls him, just as he’s climbing into bed, and Neal dives to get it before the vibrating wakes someone up or causes his phone to fall off of his end table. 

“Yeah?” he says, and he keeps his voice low.

Dave says, “Hey, so, I was thinking,” and it sounds like he’s been running.

“Thinking what?” Neal asks, and he’s about to ask if Dave’s okay before he gets cut off.

“You owe me a blowjob,” Dave says, and his breath hitches halfway through the sentence and Neal feels his stomach swoop.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Neal says, and it’s not what he meant to say, but his hands are scrambling for the waistband of his boxers and his fingers are still freezing, and there's no sound anywhere except for Dave’s voice right there in his ear, ragged breathing and  _Please_  and  _Neal_ , and so Neal just says it again, “Fuck,  _Dave_.”

Dave laughs a little, says, “Another time, I’m grounded,” and Neal says it again, “ _Fuck_ ,” only this time it’s cut off at the end with a groan and Dave’s still laughing, and Neal wants to say a whole bunch of stuff to Dave right then, but he doesn’t just says “Fuck” again and again as he bucks into his hand and hopes that Dave gets it.

 

 


End file.
